Assym chute question

[CharlieCobra]

I have an Assymetrical chute in a sock for Oh Joy that I've not flown yet. This chute has a plastic collar that goes around the furler with a downhual pulley attached to that collar. It has another plastic scoop for the sock that runs with a neverending line. Anybody familiar with these? Any issues or tricks? Thanks.

[blt2ski]

Sounds like my North gennaker. The collar goes around the furler or forestay, you then have a tack line that can be set at a certain length, then attached to the bow, OR you run a line thru a pulley as I have done at the anchor fitting and run it back to the cabn top, so I can adjust the tack ht as I am sailing.

The other scoop, with the neverending line, I am thinkng is what pulls the sock up, but I could be wrong on all of these things too.

marty

[CharlieCobra]

Yeah, this one has a pulley for the tack downhaul. It's a mast head chute. Funny thing is, it only had one sheet. I looked at that and said WHAT??? I bought a second sheet for it. I'm looking forward to flying it this weekend. I had it on the foredeck last week but there wasn't enough breeze.

[sanctuarysam]

Charlie,
i've attached the link for a vid series you might find helpful..could keep you from making some mistakes (there are some tricks that aren't intuitive btw)
hope this helps.

sam

http://na.northsails.com/video_gen/

[blt2ski]

I have a large single sheet, and attached it to the clew like a jib, this allows me to gybe and pull around like a jib would in gybe. I have clip on pulleys as far back as I can along with deck, and run the lines to my genoa winch's.

It does help in longer downwind runs, the main problem I have run into with AS' is you can not run much closer than 20-30* of straight down wind. Best at about 130-150 or so. Otherwise, easy to fly for the most part, excepting two weeks ago in mid 20 knot breezes, then things got interesting, but being as that was the windest I had been in flying it, I am sure there were a few operator errors more than the sail itself.

marty

[CharlieCobra]

This single sheet was only 60' long, not long enough to do a lark's head like I did on the jib sheet for my V-21.

[JohnRPollard]

It sounds counterintuitive, but we've found it helpful to put a single reef in the mainsail -- especially in light air -- when trying to sail deep with the asym. This lets the breeze spill over and fill the chute. It is such a huge sail that having it draw nicely more than makes up for the lost mainsail area.

Otherwise we would be limited to a much higher reaching angle and the VMG would go way down.

[jimmalkin]

John - reefing the main sounds a great tip for deeper running. I'd been flying the tack higher and leading the sheet further forward to develop more "shoulder" up on the asym. I'd also been keeping the main a bit tighter than I'd do normally (to increase wind spilling into the asym) but it requires awfully close attention to the helm due to the rounding up potential. Your reefing idea is counterintuitive, but does what I've been trying to achieve without the broach risk. Thanks very much for the tip and I'll give it a run.

[JohnRPollard]

Jim, You're very welcome, and I hope it works well for you too.

I should have noted above that our boat has a masthead rig. This would not work well with a fractionally rigged boat, unless it had a full-hoist halyard for the spinnaker. Even then, the mainsails of fractional boats tend to be proportionally larger, so the penalty of reefing could be too much.

[CharlieCobra]

Mine's a CCA era boat that once had a frac rig Sym chute on it. The sail plan was altered with the addition of the 150 furling Genoa and the masthead Assym. Seeing as it's a yawl, the main isn't over large like the main found on the K-35 Sloop, which is HUGE.